Before the Colonel could clear the bush there was a shrill cry, a flutter of legs and arms, and Peg hurled herself upon Asa, wreathed her hands in his bushy hair, and with one fierce swing jerked his head backward and dragged him off his victim. The Colonel crept back into cover. “By Jove, I’ll let ’em fight it out,” he muttered. “I do believe they’ll handle him.” “I’ll get you, you little beast,” cried Asa savagely, making for Peg. But before he had taken two steps Paul was on him like a thunderbolt, raining blows on his face and neck till Asa, staggering and bellowing, turned and fairly fled, with Paul hard upon his heels, landing right and left as opportunity offered, till, once more, Asa tripping upon a root tumbled headlong upon the grass and lay groaning. The fight was over. Asa’s bullying days were done. CHAPTER XII The aftermath of the fight deprived the gallant Colonel of all his exultation in his pupil’s triumph. “What was it about?” he enquired of Paul as they rode home together. But Paul was silent. His victory brought him no elation. He had done his duty. He had fought in a perfectly good cause and, incidentally, though this he would not acknowledge even to his own secret heart, he had wiped out many a dark and deadly insult endured through many days. But for all that his face was shrouded in deep gloom. “What started the trouble?” again asked the Colonel. “Oh! Daddy, Asa is always pickin’ on Paul, and today he said—he said—I _will_ tell! now—he said Uncle Gaspard was a bad, bad man. And Paul said it was a lie, and——” But at this point Peg caught sight of Paul’s face. The look on it was enough to check Peg in mid-career. The boy was ghastly pale, his lips blue and quivering. He pulled his pony to a dead stop. “He is not a bad man, is he, Uncle Colonel?” His lips could hardly frame the words. “Certainly not. He is not a bad man. He is a—a good man, but he is having a very bad time.” “He said—he said—” Paul’s voice dropped almost to a whisper, “he said—he did—a—an awful bad thing—before—before Peter was born. But he did not—did he, Uncle Colonel?” The Colonel swore a deep oath, consigning Asa to depths of condemnation unutterable. The boy’s honest clear blue eyes the Colonel felt were boring clean down into his very soul. Nothing but the truth seemed possible. He would have given untold wealth to have been able to “lie like a gentleman.” But those blue eyes boring into the secret places of his very being disconcerted the little Colonel. He hesitated just a moment, then knew it was too late for anything but straight talking. “Peg, ride on,” he commanded, and Peg, recognising the tone, without question or hesitation obeyed. Dismounting, the Colonel drew the boy down to a seat beside him and there, face to face and as if man to man, told him the wretched tale, seeing with the boy’s pure clean eyes all its sordidness in such light as he had never before conceived it.